


Hunger

by Clio_Codex



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Fallen Jedi (Star Wars), Gen, Jedi Civil War (Star Wars), Seduction to the Dark Side, The Force, The Mandalorian Wars: 3976-3960 BBY (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27293179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clio_Codex/pseuds/Clio_Codex
Summary: A wound in the Force, an insatiable hunger....a one-shot exploring how Darth Nihilus came to be....Written for the Star Wars Fanfiction Discord High Council October Bounty.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: High Council Bounty 10/20





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Had an idea but not in love with how it turned out....posting anyway....because why not :)
> 
> Just wanted to give a shout out to "Of Ash and Dying Stars" by Goshawkling and "Memory" by kosiah for their depictions of Nihilus which you should also read if you want more Nihilus.

It started like an itch, this tiny _thing_ just barely there, in the wake of Malachor V.He’d heard all those deaths, all that screaming, knew he was dying, too, felt the Force ripping and pulling at his flesh (or was that the weapon, he wasn’t sure).

There were four of them left on the bridge of the ship, one fellow Jedi and two Republic soldiers.In the wake of the blast - or whatever it was because it was too powerful to be described as a blast, more like a giant sucking void - the ship was broken, dead in space, emergency lights flickering on and off, alarms wailing. 

He was alive, but barely, that itch just starting.Searing pain radiated throughout his body; the concussive waves (or was it a sucking) had thrown him against the hard metal of the ship, breaking things inside him.Blood dripped from a gash in his forehead.He tasted copper and death, heard the moans of his crew mates.His head hurt and he realized he’d been knocked unconscious, for how long he wasn’t sure.He heard ragged breathing (was that his own), but nothing else save the wailing alarms.

Moving hurt too much so he lay there, feeling the screaming in the Force, wondering what it would feel like to let go and die. _There is no death, there is the Force_.How many times had he said those words, but now, in the face of it….no, there was death, an endless void that wanted to pull him into nothingness.He forced his eyes open, needing even the smallest hint of light to keep him from that void and temper his fear.

A face appeared over his own. _Are you ok?Can you hear me?_ He knew this face as one of the soldiers, couldn’t think of the name. _Can you stand?We need to evacuate._ The itch tingled.He felt a sudden _need_ to touch the man’s face, to _taste_ something about him.His head spun; the itch goaded him just enough that he raised a tentative hand to graze the man’s cheek. _Hey, are you listening?_ The man was bleeding too; his fingers felt blood and the itch burned, still small but so insistent.His throat clinched, his fingers rubbed in the blood.

The man’s eyes were confused, then frightened.His own face was impassive save the faintest curl of his lip.His fingers spread wide across the man’s face, there was a jolt, and the body fell heavy on top of his own. 

For a moment he lay panting, feeling the itch quiet just a bit, then rolled the dead man to the side.Something in him wondered if he should be sad, horrified even.Why had the man died?But when he’d felt that life drain, he felt his own strengthen, pull him back from the yawning void.His pain lessened and his body felt less broken.

He pulled to his knees and crawled, seeing another body nearby.This one was half-dead already, barely breathing.His hand again played across the face, so gently and then the jolt, fainter this time. He sat back on his heels, waiting for his breath to calm, understanding he was not going to die.

Someone called his name.He knew that voice too, the other Jedi.Knew her name even, but that hardly mattered.He stood on shaky legs, wondering if was the void or the jolts that made them quiver, felt the itch grow to a louder nagging buzz deep in his core as he moved to the woman who called him.She was trapped, a leg stuck under a fallen console, not a fatal injury but a painful one.He felt that pain rippling through the Force. Felt her fear.The buzzing wanted that fear.

_Can you help me push it off?It’s stuck on something, I think.Can’t budge it._ He smiled, not unkindly.Of course he would help this friend, wouldn’t he?He went to to her side, accidentally brushed against her and _oh_ the buzzing, nagging itch flared.He clinched his jaw against it, blinking his eyes, some part of him knowing the _wrongness_ of answering that want. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear, felt like he was underwater and drowning, knew if he wanted to breathe he needed to _take_.

This time the jolt threw him back, left him breathless.He felt something surging through his veins, something like the opposite of the Force, something that whispered of destruction.And yet…the itch was quiet, almost silent in the wake of it.He found he was able to stand, to walk, to look at the three bodies left and feel sadness at their loss.So many died today he knew.No one would wonder at these.

The itch still silent, he left the bridge, went to find other survivors who would help him escape.For now he was sated.

It hadn’t lasted long, the absence of the itch.His injury was gone now so there was no excuse for the taking (had there been before), so for a while he held it at bay, knowing the _wrongness_ of what he’d done.When the itch could no longer be ignored, he sought bodies that would not be missed, some sad-sacks living in the shadows.Perhaps taking them was really a mercy - it was easier to pretend it was anyway.

These bodies had little connection to the Force, only the barest thread that connected all living things; he hardly felt the jolt. And now that he’d tasted _taking_ the Force from another, felt that rush of unstoppable _wanting_ , these bodies held little appeal, their deaths inconsequential.Still….anything was better than trying to resist the itch. 

Sometimes he stared at the bodies after, kicked them with his boot to remind himself that they were dead, never quite sure how he done what he had.Sometimes he woke up, missing days from before, occasionally finding the shells empty beside him. It got harder to care.

A different war had started, the Jedi civil war some called it.He’d been a Jedi once hadn’t he? Now he wasn’t sure.He’d followed Revan to that first war and followed him still, but it was getting hard to remember why, to remember if he cared what they were fighting about. 

Apparently he did care about death. Or rather he cared that the war killed, meaning the bodies of those he took simply faded into the carnage. All that death silenced the last bit of his old self that whispered _this is a dark path_ , justified letting the need guide his actions, let the itch grow in intensity.

The second time he’d taken from a Force user was even better than the first.He’d had to be so careful about it, because the man was supposed to be an ally and they’d been assigned a mission together.If he turned up dead, there would need to be an explanation, and there was the risk that the man would see what was about to happen, would fight back.But the taking he’d done already had made him stronger, more clever, even if they were nulls. 

Mostly he just couldn’t resist the wanting, remembered that jolt from the first Jedi, the way the Force had surged in his veins.That pushed him past any hesitation.

The man had sensed the danger, had tried to twist away.But the wanting made it possible to prevail, helped him keep one arm locked around the man’s throat while the other probed his face, then just the slightest caress, a twist of his wrist, the rush that made his eyes roll and pulse surge. _Don’t fight it,_ he whispered, wondering who he was addressing. 

A trickle of blood dripped from his nose.He wiped it absently with the back of his hand.

After that, the nulls barely interested him although he was forced to take them to keep the itch quiet for even a few minutes.Luckily the war meant he was supposed to kill Jedi, those that claimed to stay true to the light, so many to take, so many times to feel that intoxicating jolt from ripping the Force into the nothing. 

He was so strong now, he knew, and yet…sometimes it was hard to think clearly. If he just listened to the buzzing in his veins though, followed to the next rush, he could keep going, keep growing.They hardly looked like bodies, just auras of Force energy calling to him, pulling him. 

He rarely ate anymore.Such an inconvenience. 

Eventually that war ended, too.Had they won? Didn’t matter.

Malachor called him back, the Sith academy there.He met others, the broken looking man who could not die and the old woman full of riddles and promises. _I can show you things, show you to use this hunger_ , she’d said. And for a while she had. 

He’d started wearing the mask then and the robes.It had felt like he was starting to come apart at his seams, that his Force-fed body did not want to keep its human shape.The woman, Traya, had said, _these will keep you whole_ , and they did. 

The itch was gone, or rather he no longer perceived it as an itch, being now beyond such corporal concerns.A _hunger_ Traya had called it and that’s what the itch became. She’d also called him a _wound_ , said he had the power to end the Force, to consume it all. She prattled on, but her words were muffled by the thrumming of his need, the hunger to destroy. _Nihilus_ , she’d called him.

The broken looking one, Sion, had done the talking when they’d confronted her, cast her out. _Betrayer_.His own words felt jumbled, just vague thoughts that couldn’t form on his tongue in any semblance of the language he’d once had.But he could _take_ and he did.Not enough to kill her, but enough to leave her wounded and without the Force.He’d wanted to go further, but Sion had stopped him, _leave her to rot in her humiliation._

He would need a ship to feed and found one in the ruins orbiting Malachor. _The Ravager_. He vaguely recalled being on the bridge of this ship years earlier, the place where the itch had begun. Maybe that meant something, not that it mattered.

His strength had grown; it was easy to pull it from the wreckage.The gaping holes in its sides were of no consequence.The same corruption of the Force that now held him together would bind the ship, enable it to travel the stars again.

He would need a crew, and found one in men so easily fooled by the promise of power.The bodies he chose were nearly silent to the Force, less a temptation.But parts of the hunger could not be controlled, drained them even without his conscious effort.He spoke his desire into their minds - or maybe it was the desire of the hunger -their fear kept their bodies moving well enough.They were replaceable anyway.

He’d had a mother once, perhaps one who had loved him and kissed his head when he cried.There must have been a mother, because a man does not spring out of nothing, and he had once been a man. 

Now he was a wound, a gaping hole in the fabric of the Force, a _nothingness_ that wanted only to take, a great sucking void that grew in its need as it took. 

Sometimes when the hunger was sated, he could think enough as a man for just a moment, enough to realize there was no longer a rush in the taking. The pleasure had lasted longer than the feeling of wrongness, but both had been consumed by the nothingness, leaving only the need behind.Perhaps that’s what held him together at all, this need to take.

How had he known about Katarr?Didn’t matter because he knew, knew that so many would be there.The hunger groaned in anticipation.So many here who saw through the Force and the foolish Jedi, too.Had they thought to hide from him?If he could think clearly maybe he would laugh at their foolishness.Maybe he would know that going to Katarr wasn’t even his choice, just a compulsion that he had to heed. His own will meant little now.

He no longer needed to touch to take, but wanted to walk among them, wanted to feel their fear at the nothing, needed to taste the destruction up close. Some part of him wondered why, but it was quickly forgotten.

Time meant nothing anymore so he could not say how long he fed upon Katarr. Sometimes in the dust and ash he would find a thing he’d missed, would indulge the taking in the old way, the splay of his fingers on a face twisted with fear.It was hard to touch like that now, only the gloves he wore gave his hand shape.He felt little, wondered if he should care at the loss of that.

There was a woman in the ashes, one of those who saw through the Force, she was alive but barely.The hunger was quiet enough that he could feel curious about her.Why had she lived? Perhaps this one he could use to go the places he could no longer walk. _Master_ , she had said.Her fear would drive her to serve; the will of the living was merely another thing to take.

Something was out there, a threat that could end his hunger.Something that was his inverse, one wound to cauterize another.He sent the woman to find out.

There was something he should be worried about…the woman hadn’t returned.Why had she gone?He’d sent her….

_Telos._ The man in front of him was from Onderon though, wasn’t he?Other fools who’d wanted to serve him, thinking that his power could be theirs. _Go to Telos_ , the man said. _You can feed there._

The vacuum of space was so close, just there at the breach in the hull sealed only by the corruption of the Force holding the ship together.Part of him wanted to touch that breach, pass into the nothing of space.The flicker in him that was still a man knew that he should to spare the galaxy its inevitable destruction. But the wanting forced what was left of his eyes to turn to the surface of Telos.

She came to him, the other wound, brought the woman, too. He should be angry at the woman’s betrayal but even such a simple emotion eluded him now.In the Force, the other wound felt like the vacuum of space, the void of Malachor, the great nothing he had become. If he touched her, maybe it would be the end of all things.Or maybe just the end of what he’d become. A lost memory whispered, _there is no death, there is the Force_ , the flicker of the man left within him grasped at the comfort of that.To just let go of the insatiable need….

The nothing was a relief in the end.


End file.
